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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] The mystery of vav-consecutive

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The mystery of vav-consecutive
  • Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 12:21:53 +0100

On 24/05/2005 03:29, Ken Penner wrote:

I think it's fair to say it was S. R. Driver's _A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in
Hebrew and some other syntactical questions_ that popularized (in English) Ewald's idea
that the Hebrew qatal and yiqtol were not past and future tenses but perfect and
imperfect "aspects". I recommend the Eerdmans/Dove 1998 reprint with an
introduction by W. Randall Garr.


I'm not sure that this is fair. Gesenius, or at least GKC (1910, section 40a), says that "The verb has only two tense-forms, (Perfect and Imperfect...), besides an Imperative..., two Infinitives and a Participle". So it was not SR Driver who introduced or popularised in English the terms "perfect" and "imperfect", because they were already used by Gesenius or GKC some time earlier - in English and in the most widespread reference grammar. Of course GKC may have been dependent on Ewald (1803-1875).

Furthermore, in the note at section 47a, GKC writes "The Indo-Germanic scheme of three periods of time (past, present and future) is entirely foreign to the Semitic tense-idea, which regards an occurrence only from the point of view of completed or incomplete action". In other words, although GKC doesn't use the term "aspect", which was probably not yet in use in general grammatical description, it is aspect that they are describing as the distinction between Hebrew verb forms. And all of this some time before SR Driver, and in English, although perhaps dependent on Ewald.

So Driver's contribution seems to have been only to introduce the term "aspect" (but not the concept which was already known) into English language Hebrew grammatical studies.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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